


I'll Go There Proud

by ArtemisRae



Series: For the Unknown [4]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: And I mean vague, El's not in this much, F/M, Gen, Growing Up is Hard, TW: vague discussion of the awful things that happened to El in the lab, an indictment of mike wheelers stubbornness, and moving into the next emotion arc of this series, and your parents still want you to have a curfew, but hes making progress, but theyre talking about her, karen and ted wheeler have a functioning marriage, look this is what happens when you have lived through the apocalypse twice, nothing graphic, wrapping up drama with mike's parents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-14 20:29:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13597785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtemisRae/pseuds/ArtemisRae
Summary: I've got a song, I've got a songAnd I carry it with me and I sing it loudIf it gets me nowhere, I'll go there proud- I Got a Name, Jim CroceMike Wheeler engages in a timeless rite of passage: a beer with his father.





	I'll Go There Proud

**Author's Note:**

> Next in mine and Juxtaposie's series. I'm officially calling it: it really helps to read the other stories in this series before you read this one. They give you a lot of context for what Mike and Ted are talking about. If you're determined to continue, you should know that Mike and El got married at 18 right out of high school, and the Wheeler's weren't particularly happy about it.

Mike dodged three of his younger cousins as he tried to navigate his way back to the living room. He was holding two drinks - one coffee, for El, one eggnog, for him - and he kept the cups lifted above his head so they couldn’t be jarred and spilled as he squeezed his way through the people crammed into the house. As his feet found the carpet he reflected that there must be multiple versions of hell. He had been to actual hell once, and being trapped in his parent’s house on Christmas Eve with his entire extended family to the tunes of _Frosty the Snowman_ and _Marshmallow World_ certainly evoked a specific emotion in him very similar to the frustration and urgency that he had felt navigating the Upside-Down tunnels running under Hawkins.

The kids were supposed to stay in the basement. Unless they were taking pictures or opening presents, he’d always been banished to the basement when he’d been a kid. Had he ever been as annoying as the horde of children that were running underfoot? His brain said no, even as his heart reminded him of foggy memories; fighting with his cousins, breaking toys, and the argument he and his mother had gotten into last Christmas in front of most of the family.

He hadn’t asked, but he was positive that was why his mother had insisted on hosting Christmas again this year - technically, she and his Aunt Lisa were supposed to trade year to year, but after Mike had stormed from the house in spectacular fashion the previous Christmas Eve, Karen Wheeler was almost certainly looking for redemption.

The house was hot, and he regretted the sweater he was wearing. It was more than a little ridiculous, red and brown stripes with dancing pine trees, and it had been a Christmas gift from his mom. She had been visibly pleased to see him in it. It was such a little thing to make her happy, and to Mike, it was worth it. Things had been so much better ever since his appendix had come out the previous month, and Mike really did want to keep the status quo.

This conciliatory feeling from pleasing his mother was so much better than the constant irritation that something wasn’t right in his life. It had been eating at him for over a year, since he’d started college, and it infuriated him because everything should have been perfect. He had El, he had their home, he had school, he had his friends - everything was going well, and the only real source of discontent in his life had been his parents.

That, and the fact that El was now missing from the living room. He scanned the room - he’d left her on the couch, talking to Nancy, and now they were both gone.

“Miiiiichael.” There was a tug at his sleeve, and he found his mother’s Aunt Eileen sitting with his Aunt Lisa. “Michael, your mother said you were in the hospital.”

“Yeah,” he confirmed, distracted as he was still searching for his wife and sister. “It was just my appendix.”

“Are you feeling okay now?” Aunt Lisa asked. Mike flashed her a quick smile. He’d always liked his Aunt Lisa, older than his mother and always possessing patience for him even after he’d pushed Karen Wheeler past the point of exasperation.

“Oh yeah, fine,” Mike said, taking a sip of eggnog. He thought of the scar lurking beneath his sweater, of the way El had carefully run a fingertip over it in the shower that morning. “Still hurts if I cough or laugh sometimes.”

“Your mom was worried because your apartment is on the second floor. That hasn’t been a problem, has it?”

Mike made a face in response. “No, but carrying all my books to campus is. They just said I could lift more than ten pounds last week, and my backpack definitely weighs more than that.”

“Oh but you’re doing so well!” Aunt Eileen said, her frog face breaking into a big grin. “I heard you made the Dean’s List last semester. Your mother was so proud when she told us.”

Mike blinked, surprised at this revelation. He had never discussed his accomplishments with his parents and had no recollection of telling them he’d made the Dean’s List. In all honesty, there was a good chance he’d shouted it in anger, or used it as ammunition in an argument. But it was true nonetheless, he was making the Dean’s List. It had basically been a giant middle finger to his parents - _I can do this without your help._ He wasn’t just going to succeed, he was going to excel.

Of course, he was still waiting to see how his hospitalization had affected his grades. Most of his professors had been understanding, but Mike had still been scrambling to get all his homework turned in before the semester ended.

“Yeah well.” He shrugged, looked down at his feet. “I like engineering, so…”

He scratched the back of his head and looked around the room again. He really didn’t want to leave El alone for too long, even with Nancy for support. Whatever had happened while he was in the hospital, she seemed as comfortable with his parents now as she had been in high school, when his parents had thought they were simply a pair of sweethearts, before they’d gotten married and everything had gone to hell. This made him happy, but he still had visions of aunts asking the wrong question, or some uncle making a drunk comment, and her feeling isolated, or put on the spot, or unwelcome.

No matter what happened ( _had happened, would happen_ ) with his parents, he’d chosen this girl, and he’d choose her again and again and again. More than that, he’d do his best not to put her in situations that would make her doubt that choice.

(It had never been a choice; he regularly had nightmares about 1983 and 1984, but chief among them, the one that popped up again and again was El in that big yellow t-shirt, alone in the rain with a flashlight playing over her face, but he wasn’t the one holding the flashlight; it was the Bad Men, or worse, and all he could do was watch and scream.)

“You haven’t seen Nancy have you?” Mike asked them, looking around again. The noise level in the house was at a dull roar, with the chatter of adults talking and children screaming over the determined Christmas jingles that rang in the background.

“Oh Holly came along and collected her and your wife. Something about wanting to show them a dance?” Aunt Lisa answered. Mike immediately looked towards the basement. Holly had been taking dance lessons for years, and this year had graduated to a hip hop dance troupe - and her favorite hobby was to trap people in the basement and force them to watch her and her friends rehearse their routines.

Mike had been sucked into the vortex the previous night, and just when he’d been convinced he’d actually go insane if he heard _Vogue_ one more time they’d moved on to _Groove is in the Heart_.

He stood up, eager to get away. “I should find them. El is too polite to excuse herself, she’ll sit there all night and watch them.”

Aunt Eileen’s eyes lit up. “Yes, find her and bring her here Michael! I’ve never met her properly, and you two have been married for over a year now.”

“Sure,” Mike agreed easily, with no intention of doing so. The last thing he wanted was Aunt Eileen getting her claws into El - she was the family busybody, and she’d pepper El with questions that she couldn’t reasonably answer.

“I can’t believe you got married,” she added, looking at him appraisingly, “and I wasn’t even there to see it!”

“No one was there to see it,” Mike said distantly, already disengaged. “It was a courthouse wedding.”

He stepped away, headed towards the basement, eyes scanning the crowd for El just in case. He had a hand on the doorknob when his mother appeared and snagged his sweater by the elbow.

“Can you go help your father?” she asked, with a look on her face that Mike recognized from childhood; it was her _I’m really really stressed out about throwing the best party ever_ face. He would have felt bad if he hadn’t know that she was already a bottle of wine deep and _loved_ making a big fuss about making sure everything was perfect. “I sent him to get more chairs from the garage but I’m sure he’ll need help carrying them in.”

“Sure,” Mike agreed, changing course and turning towards the garage. El was safe, if bored, with Holly, and hopefully they’d switched to New Kids on the Block. El had a fondness for the boy band, and Mike had seen the routine to _The Right Stuff_ so many times at this point that he could probably join them in the dance. She was fine for a few more minutes.

He stepped out into the garage, and it was almost like stepping into an alien world - unlike the house, which was bright, hot, and packed with people, the garage was quiet, cold, and empty, save Ted Wheeler and his brand new cherry red Cadillac Eldorado.

His dad was standing in front of the car, sipping from a can of Michelob.

Mike had heard about the car, but this was the first time he’d seen it in person. He took it in.

This was what they had traded in the station wagon for. He felt the familiar crawl of anger in his gut. It was the same anger that he’d felt dogging him since El had disappeared with the demogorgon, since he’d had to let her go close the gate, since he’d been told about the terrible things that had been done to her in that lab, since they’d gotten married and Hopper’d had to drive them to Terre Haute.

Hopper wasn’t supposed to drive them to Terre Haute. Mike was supposed to have the station wagon.

The station wagon his parents had declined to give him once he’d had the nerve to marry El and they had decided to withdraw their financial support. The station wagon that they’d traded in for the Cadillac, even though Mike and El could still use it out in Terre Haute.

The station wagon that had never officially, legally, been his.

He licked his lips, felt the heat in his stomach, the nervous energy gather in his limbs -

And then, in the span of a heartbeat, he sighed and let it go. Just like that.

 _Status quo_ , he reminded himself. He couldn’t pick a fight with his dad over a car on Christmas Eve. He wasn’t going to get the station wagon at this point. It was gone. The only thing he’d get was a lot of hard feelings, and reopening old wounds.

He ran his fingertips over the shiny red hood. “Wow… how come we never had anything like this when I was in school?”

Ted raised an eyebrow in that infuriating way that only he and Nancy seemed to have mastered. “After the way you desecrated the station wagon?”

Mike’s brain short circuited - much like someone about to die, his life flashed in front of his eyes. Instead of his whole life, however, it was limited to a series of events involving El: El at the drive-in, the school parking lot before classes, the pull-off near the quarry, the woods near Hopper’s cabin.

Before he could wrap his mind around a response, Ted continued, “I mean, Holly was still finding Froot Loops between the seats right up until we traded it in! You probably spilled more juice boxes in that car than you’ve ever managed to drink.”

Mike dissolved into laughter. That was absolutely what his father would consider desecration.

“Come on, I was just a kid. And this is a nice car...” he said wistfully. Then he gave his dad an inquisitive look. “Is that what you’re doing out here? Just looking at the car? Mom said you needed help with chairs.”

Ted gestured behind him, where there was a stack of metal folding chairs leaning against the wall. “I have the chairs. I’m just having a drink first.”

Mike shrugged. He could understood. El also found big crowds in small spaces like this overstimulating. Mike could carve out a corner so he could hang out with the people he really wanted to talk to, but El couldn’t get past the background murmur of the people around her and often felt surrounded. With both sides of the family here the house was packed, and Ted was used to a quiet house. Karen was the social butterfly, the one on the phone at all hours, the one who drove meals for the church just to visit with people.

He reached out to take a couple of chairs, intent on retreating and leaving his dad to finish processing his thoughts, when Ted did something so dramatically out of character Mike wanted to pinch himself, positive he was dreaming. Ted reached into the standing fridge next to the pile of chairs, held up a can of beer, and asked, “Son, do you want a drink?”

For a moment he was frozen - Mike would have predicted a fully grown demogorgon crawling out of the fridge before he predicted his father offering him a Michelob. He looked at the can in his dad’s hand, and thought of the hot, crowded house.

“Yeah,” he answered, taking the can, wondering if his awed tone was as obvious to his father as it was to him.

Ted kicked open two of the chairs, wedging them between the refrigerator and the car. He pointed to Mike’s hand. “You won’t tell your mother,” he ordered gently. Mike wouldn't be 21 until the April after next. “I don’t think she’s naive about what you kids get up to but…”

Mike shrugged, looked down at his hands. “I don’t party but I know what beer tastes like.”

“Good man.” Ted sat back in his chair, and it was with some surprise Mike found that their postures were mirrored. He had taken after his mother’s side of the family, a dead ringer for his Uncle Benjamin, and now Mike was stunned to find something that he’d clearly inherited from his father. He remembered being young - in middle school, and high school - and searching for something that he could have gotten from Ted, anything that would justify having this bore for a dad. It was small, but it made Mike wonder when he’d stopped looking.

“And what about El?” his dad asked as follow up, and Mike started at the odd nature of the question. His parents generally didn’t ask about El.

“El? God no. She doesn’t look like a party girl, does she?” El was quiet and gentle and wore jeans and t-shirts - and usually _his_ t-shirts, at that. He’d seen the girls on campus who partied. They were loud and flirty and belonged to sororities and wore neon mini skirts and high heels.

Mike had meant it as a joke, mostly because it was so painfully obvious to him, but his dad’s reply was serious. “I honestly don’t know Michael.”

Mike instantly felt his hackles raise. "What does that mean?"

"I mean - " Ted stopped himself, and looked at Mike. "Will you sit back and relax? I'm trying to have a conversation and you look like you're about to throw your beer at me."

Mike blinked. Took stock. Relaxed back into his chair again, though his eyes darted towards the door, looking for an escape.

"You always get like that with her. Why is that?" Ted asked.

"She's my wife," Mike said stiffly, taking a sip from the can. It seemed less appealing now. He felt as if he'd been tricked. "And you and Mom don't really like -"

But Ted was shaking his head. "That's not what I'm talking about. You were like that even before you got married. Since high school. You and Chief Hopper both, now that I think about it."

Mike stared at his dad, processing what he was saying. There were memories, definitely, of awkward family dinners in high school, El and sometimes Hopper sitting politely with his family, and when his mother tried to ask questions he or Hopper would jump in, gently deflect -

But Mike didn’t think that was fair. Karen wanted to know things that El couldn't always answer. Stuff about school, or her family - Mike didn't want her to be embarrassed for just barely passing English, or needing extra tutoring, and Hopper wanted to save her from explaining what had happened to her mother, and how she'd ended up so far behind in school.

Maybe they had been too protective, of both El and Mike’s parents. Hopper was still paranoid that there were people listening in, targeting the Wheelers, and who knew what innocent comment his parents could make that might bring the Department of Energy down on their heads?

“That’s - that’s not -” he stuttered, but Ted was shaking his head.

“Your mother and I, we talked, you know. Because it seemed like you two were doing everything in your power to try and stop us from getting to know her.” He leaned forward, toward Mike, pitching his voice low, as if preemptively soothing a wild animal, and Mike saw red around the edges of his vision. “We even thought at one point, maybe, she was slow, like, _slow_ , you know?”

He tapped his index finger to his temple, and Mike’s jaw dropped. “She’s _not_ -”

“Yes, we realized pretty quickly. It’s different now, we just didn’t know-”

“She’s -”

“We want to get to know her,” Ted finished, just as Mike said hotly, “She was _abused_.”

Ted cut himself off and stared at Mike. And much like when he’d been looking at the Cadillac, Mike felt all that anger fill him up again, the same way he’d felt for 353 days in 1984 - except this time it was directed at himself.

He bit his lip and covered his face with one hand, kicking himself. There were reasons that he’d never shared any of El’s history with his parents, and it wasn’t just because of Hopper’s worries about spies from Hawkins Lab.

It was because it wasn’t his to share. It was El’s, and he didn’t feel like it was appropriate for him to drop this on his parents, to dramatically change how they thought of her without letting her set the boundaries. Hopper had medical records, and she had seen them, and he’d heard about them, but there were things that had happened to El in that lab that he was still learning about, usually dropped in simple sentences that he had to parse out:

_My hair got in the way._

_The bed had hooks._

_They never gave me socks._

_There weren’t any windows._

It had never changed the way he felt about her, but what about his parents?

He groaned. The only reason he’d said it at all was because he was angry and wanted to embarrass his father for calling her _slow_. And now it was out.

“Did you just say...?” his dad asked, and when Mike lowered his hand he saw his dad’s face: confused, alarmed, and obviously nervous. This was out of Ted’s depths, and they both knew it. It was only within Michael’s depths inasmuch as he wouldn’t leave El alone to drown in it. “Michael…? Is there….?”

Nervously, Mike sipped his beer and momentarily wished for something harder before rebuking himself. He’d once stepped off a cliff, he’d believed El was alive for almost a year, he’d climbed into tunnels, and he hadn’t needed anything but his own determination to back up those actions.

“She’s…” He exhaled hard, squared his shoulders. _You made your bed Wheeler_. “Look, d’you remember when she first came to Hawkins? Freshman year of high school?”

Ted raised an eyebrow. “Seriously? Your mother was so excited you made friends with her. Half the town was phoning, trying to get the full story from her.”

“Yeah, ‘cause Chief Hopper had some teenager he never knew about dumped on him, right?” Big news in a small town like Hawkins. Mike remembered Will telling them how people had kept bugging Joyce at work, asking for gossip, and the way teachers would pause before reading her last name. The fact that El didn’t have much to say about where she’d come from had only fueled the rumor mill. “Well she didn’t get dumped on him. The fact is, the chief found El in a… really bad situation. A really _dangerous_ situation. He took her in because the people he took her from were still dangerous, and there wasn’t anywhere safe to send her.”

God knew what his father was picturing, but Mike could see on Ted’s face that he was reliving every interaction he’d ever had with El, coloring it with this new information. Every time Mike had answered over her or Hopper had deflected a question, every time El had been polite but refused eye contact, every time Mike had insisted she be included even if his other friends weren’t - all viewed with this new understanding of her and where she’d come from.

“Well this… certainly changes things,” Ted remarked, his face colored red.

 _Good_. Mike thought viciously. He should feel as bad as Mike did.

“Do you see?” Mike asked, pressing his point home. “Like, how much worse it was going to be for her if I left her and went away to college? We had to get married because of the school. We weren’t just being dumb kids.”

"Michael, how could we think anything else? You gave us approximately twelve hours notice you were getting married." His dad's tone was solemn and disbelieving as he recovered from the shock Mike had delivered. Mike cringed as he remembered that fight. It wasn’t his proudest moment. "I mean, we were still pretty sure she was pregnant, until you two came home for Christmas."

"She wasn't!" Mike bit back a sharper reply. That had been _everyone's_ assumption, and explaining it over and over again had pissed him off to no end. The suggestion that he could ever be that careless with her was deeply offensive to him - some part of him understood the concern, the anxious questions, but he also felt that he and El were owed more consideration than that. They weren't young kids goofing around - and every insinuation and joke had only hurt El, which had made him angry in a ways that had made him feel like he was 13 again.

His leg jiggled in agitation. "El couldn't just wait here for me. And I didn't want to make her. I think it would have hurt her more to be left behind. And not in like, the dramatic teenager way that I know you and Mom think. I think it would have really hurt her."

"That's... admirable Michael but -" Ted glanced at Mike’s face, and then cut himself off. He had never pegged his father as particularly self aware, but he reversed course on whatever he'd been about to say. Mike abruptly remembered the station wagon. It seemed he wasn’t the only one who’d realized that there was nothing to gain from picking a fight on Christmas Eve. "I guess… it doesn't really matter why. What's done is done, and after seeing your apartment I think you're both happy."

"We are," Mike said stiffly. "

I mean," his dad made a face. "You got a cat."

"Ugh." Mike rolled his eyes, "I did not get a cat. El got a cat. That thing loves her. I still think he's going to turn into a demodog."

"A what?"

"It’s Dn D monster," Mike covered quickly. "And it was because of El, really. He came up the fire escape and it was the middle of winter and she couldn't put him back outside."

There was more to that story, nuances that he didn’t want to tell his father: that animals didn't like El and avoided her; or worse, were outright hostile. That it had been below freezing, and El knew what it was like to try and survive outside in the Indiana winter. That El had been alone, cooped up in their apartment, with just the downstairs neighbors and him for company, and that dumb cat did something that made it a little bit easier for her.

Mike shrugged. "He hates me but it doesn't matter. As long as she's happy."

"That's nice of you," Ted offered. "Because he doesn't seem like a nice cat."

"He's the worst animal I've ever met in my life," Mike said fervently. "But she loves him."

"Well I think that's an important lesson you learned, son," his dad said, and now Mike noticed he seemed truly relaxed again - sitting back, legs crossed. They were working their way back into territory that he was comfortable in. "It can be hard to make sacrifices for your marriage, and I imagine that it's especially hard when you're both young."

Mike sipped his beer, and looked at his dad out of the corner of his eye. He was saying something about his own marriage, Mike was sure, but it was hard to pinpoint what exactly. He'd never much questioned his parents’ marriage - mostly he was impatient with their attempts to parent him.

His mom took care of the house, his dad worked, and they were both tired. They'd met soon after his dad had graduated from college, and Ted had been thirty when they got married. Nancy had come along right before their first wedding anniversary.

They'd always presented important family discussions as a united front, whether at the dinner table or in the living room. Sure, his mother had always been the one to reach out, but his father had always been there next to her, holding her hand and nodding. Maybe on most weekends he was exhausted and laid in the recliner, but he'd never missed a family vacation. Mike had memories of his father trying in vain to pique an interest in sports, taking him to baseball games ( _so boring_ ) and while he was sure his dad had been disappointed when Mike had ended up gangly and uncoordinated, he'd never complained about the expensive electronics that had inevitably made up Mike's Christmas lists, or the game guides that took up his bookshelves, or the way his friends would overtake the basement for weekends at a time with their dungeon crawls.

Ted was boring, and he spoke in clichés, and he mostly wanted to be alone to read the newspaper, but Mike had never thought that reflected on the state of his parent's marriage. He remembered elementary school, and how he was never allowed to go to the Byers before Will's dad had left for good. Even after, Karen had preferred hosting Will - _you have so much to share, don't you think Michael?_ And Dustin didn't have a father at all! So maybe his parents weren't as openly touchy-feely as the Sinclairs - everyone knew that _they_ were madly in love - but Mike still thought he was lucky, all things considered.

Finally he said, "You still haven't told Mom about the money, have you?"

He and his dad had never really talked about the money. They’d had a single argument, when Mike had received the first check, then promptly called him at work and shouted at him. Ted hadn’t shouted back. Ted had simply told Mike that whatever he did with the check - whether it was to rip it up the way Mike had threatened, or use it to pay for heat the way Ted had suggested - he was going to send one every month.

He’d _wanted_ to rip it up - but El had been there in the doorway, listening, almost hiding, and Mike didn’t think he’d forget the look on her face anytime soon. She had been the one to remind him that they really needed the money. Mike was willing to go without heat to ( _somehow_ ) punish his dad, but he wasn’t willing to punish El, who had done nothing wrong but love him and be willing to struggle just so they could be together in Terre Haute.

Truthfully, he was still pissed at the idea that his parents could withdraw financial support, leave him and El to fend for themselves and then expect Mike to fawn over a check when his dad changed his mind apropos of nothing. But that didn’t change the fact that El had spent too much of her life being cold, and he had made a personal vow to make sure it never happened again if he could help it.

“I’m still waiting for the right time,” Ted confirmed. “But I don’t think she’ll object, if you’re worried.”

Mike bit his lip, swished what was left in the can. Finally, he voiced the real question, the one that had been underneath all of the anger and frustration and empty threats to tear up checks. “If you wanted to support us why didn’t you just talk to her? That might have helped us more than any amount of money.”

Maybe there was a little bit of anger behind that question too. But if Ted Wheeler hadn’t been as offended by their marriage as previously thought, if he’d just stayed quiet while Karen Wheeler had tried to prove her point, it was almost as offensive to Mike as the idea that he could just start sending them money out of the blue.

Ted could have been an ally. They needed allies.

“Michael.” Ted cleared his throat, leaned forward and braced his elbows on his knees. “You’ve taken your wedding vows.”

 _In good times and in bad, for richer, for poorer, in sickness, in health._ They’d already faced all of those things, even before their wedding. He’d made those vows a million different times, said them a million different ways, since he’d brought her home on the run from the Bad Men.

_Here, these clothes are clean._

_I won’t tell her about you, promise._

_You saved me._

_You won’t have to eat leftovers like a dog anymore._

“Yeah,” Mike shrugged. “So?”

The look on his father’s face was piercing. “So you shouldn’t judge how other married couples choose to interpret them.”

Mike’s mouth dropped open, but Ted continued, “We made certain decisions about how we were going to parent before we ever had you kids. And that’s what we’ve done, for better and for worse.”

For a hot instant Mike saw red, because what he heard was, _your mother and I stuck to choices made before you were born so screw you_.

And then he thought of sitting in a McDonald’s on a Friday night in April and playing with cold french fries while he and El had made the decision to go ahead and get married - regardless of what others would think.

He thought of their decision to get all the paperwork together and get a license and then go to the courthouse, and how they’d decided to tell their friends and their parents - _tell_ them, not ask for their opinion, or approval.

The can in his hand clinked as his grip on it loosened. He swallowed hard, cleared his throat. Strange, to have clarity when before he’d only had guesses and assumptions. He didn’t feel better, exactly, but he understood in a way he hadn’t before - or maybe in a way he’d refused to. It didn’t matter now.

“You know,” Ted said, tone light, “obviously we want you to be focused on school right now, but grandchildren will go a long way towards smoothing things over with your mother.”

Mike cringed. That had been his dad’s attempt to turn them towards a truce, because everyone knew that Karen Wheeler loved babies, _everyone’s_ babies. She’d smothered Erika Sinclair in kisses every time she’d seen her until the kid had learned how to run. She waved at and talked to babies in the supermarket, and she volunteered in the quiet room at the church.

It was meant to be something lighthearted, to cap off what had been a heavy conversation, something neither one of them was used to. Mike scratched the back of his head. This was another thing he really didn’t feel comfortable talking about without El setting the boundaries.

“Can you...” Mike hesitated, looked for the words that would both explain everything and nothing. “Can you try to... Not encourage that? With Mom?”

Ted looked surprised. “Are you telling me that’s something you’ve already decided? You’re young, you’ve got a lot of time to figure it out.”

Mike looked down at his shoes. “The decision was made for us. I told you, Dad. Hopper found El in a really bad place. She still can’t really talk about it, even now.”

“Jesus.” It was the closest he’d heard his dad come to swearing in years. Then, after a heavy sigh, “All right, I guess we better get back in there. I’m surprised your mother hasn’t come looking for us herself.”

“Good idea.” Mike stood up, setting the Michelob on the hood of the Cadillac. He folded up the chair he’d been sitting in, started to gather up an armful, hooking them under his elbows, when his dad spoke again.

“Do you think we’ll need more than this? I haven’t seen any of your friends over here tonight, aren’t any of them coming?”

“Um.” Mike bit his lip. “Maybe Max later.”

Max would be desperate to escape her family’s Christmas Eve dinner. Billy was long gone, back in California, but Max still hated the house and only went back for the holidays. Plus El had asked to see her, and he was sure she’d show up before it got too late.

He counted off on his fingers. “Lucas isn’t coming home until tomorrow morning, some charity networking thing with his fraternity, Will said he might come, but Jonathan is home from New York and he might not want to leave.”

Or he might after all. Will had been stifled, cooped up with his mom lately. Mike wasn’t sure Jonathan was enough to offset that right now, but either way Will knew he had an open invitation to the Wheelers’ - both in Hawkins and in Terre Haute.

That just left…

“And Dustin,” Mike sighed, and tried to think of how to explain Dustin. “He’s probably just having a quiet dinner with his mom. He’s been kind of distant lately.”

More like he was probably down at the Alley Tavern, one of the few places that wouldn’t card him for being underage. Despite the fact that Steve hadn’t lived in Hawkins for years, Dustin seemed to spend most of his free time lately with guys that he’d met through him. They’d tried to meet up - Dustin had said he’d buy Mike a drink, but when Mike had demurred Dustin had gone out anyway and blown Mike off. When Mike had asked Will he’d learned that Dustin hadn’t spoken to him much lately either, and Mike was worried in the same way he’d been worried about Will the year after the Upside-Down.

The last time Dustin had been so quiet had been their senior year of high school, when they’d all been making plans for college - and then Dustin had abruptly stopped. He hadn’t pushed Dustin then, but Mike badly wanted to meet up with him before break was over. It was hard to keep tabs on what was happening in Hawkins from the other side of the state in Terre Haute.

In his worry about his friend he was distracted, and when he turned towards the doorway he knocked the can of beer over on the Eldorado, spilling what was left of it across the hood.

“See Michael?” His father sounded truly aggrieved, scrambling for towels. “This is why we had the station wagon.”

***

He finally got to the basement after hauling in the chairs, double checking that his mother was happy with his efforts, and being rewarded with a kiss on the cheek as his mother stood him in front of a kitchen full of relatives and bragged about him and his efforts to make the Dean’s List. Blushing and embarrassed, he managed to escape even as his uncles and cousins had called after him to _come back!_ and _talk to us!_

El was in the basement with Holly, as he’d been told. Nancy and her husband had disappeared - or escaped - but El didn’t seem to mind. She was on her feet, facing Holly, and the two of them appeared to be deep in discussion.

At some point, they’d abandoned pop music - for Christmas music. New Kids on the Block _Funky Funky Christmas_ to be precise. Holly’s face was bright red and her hair was a blond cloud, doubtlessly from her exertions. Mike hadn’t seen her sit down once the entire evening - her audience was considerably larger, with the family over, and she was taking full advantage.

He smiled at his sister as he walked up to them. Holly adored El, and had been the first person to accept her unconditionally without knowing anything about her. Nancy had told him about the tantrum Holly had thrown when his parents had refused to let her to go the courthouse to see Mike and El get married - and even now she got teary if Mike or Nancy brought up the wedding, couldn’t even look at the pictures without sniffling.

Holly gave him a happy grin in return, and El was just turning her head to see who was approaching when Mike reached out and snagged her hand. He was surprised by her appearance. El’s face was flushed, her curls frizzing in the warmth of the basement, but the smile on her face was genuine and priceless to Mike. At this time last year they’d been back at Hopper’s, Mike raging, and El neutral and quiet.

He knew now how deeply that night and everything else that had happened with his parents had affected her.

 _We want to get to know her_ Ted had just told him that out in the garage.

“Having fun?” he asked, their fingers interlocking effortlessly. “What have you two been doing?”

“Holly taught me one of her dances!” El said brightly. That explained the red face. Most of Holly’s dances - at least, from Mike’s point of view - consisted of jumping up and down for three minutes straight. He reached up and put a hand on the top of Holly’s head, which she immediately pushed away, frowning.

“You haven’t seen the Christmas dance yet Mikey, I wanted to show you since you missed the recital!” His sister had grown since he’d gone away to school - she looked more like Nancy than ever, though her hair had stayed fair, and she was already taller than Nancy too. Hard to believe she was almost the same age that he had been when he’d found El.

Holly was putting on dance shows in the basement, while at her age he’d been searching for a way to rescue Will from the Upside-Down, and protect El from the bad men. Mike bit his lip, suddenly struck by how far they’d all come. “Yeah, Baby Holly. Give me a few minutes though, I need to borrow El, but then we’ll both come back downstairs and you can show me your Christmas dance.”

Holly’s eyes lit up. “I’m going to get my costume!”

She ran off, thundering up the steps to her bedroom. Mike waited for their mother to shout at her, but heard nothing - it wasn’t fair, it seemed like Baby Holly _always_ got away with stuff he’d always gotten yelled at for when he was her age.

El was looking at him, her eyes scrutinizing. “Are you okay?”

He reached and pushed her hair out of her face, tucking a curl back. His hand skirted down her neck, thumb brushing her shoulder. “Yeah, I was just talking to my dad.”

It wasn’t that he felt better, exactly, because he didn’t. And it wasn’t like he’d reached some new level of nirvana with his father. He was still pretty irritated about the check situation, all things considered. But at least he had a new insight into how his parents functioned, and he had a better idea of what to expect from them in the future.

 _We want to get to know her_. Well, maybe that went both ways.

“Are you okay?” El repeated, and he took their clasped hands and dragged them behind his back, so her arms were around his waist and they were chest to chest, him looking down at her. He didn’t let go of her hands, and she giggled, leaned up on tiptoe to press a chaste kiss on his chin. Mike chased her back down, kissing her properly, still clutching at her hands, resting at the small of his back.

“Yeah, I am.” He pressed his forehead to hers. “Hey um, my Aunt Eileen asked if she could meet you. She’s kind of obnoxious, but, do you want to? I’ll stay with you the whole time.”

“Sure,” she agreed easily. He’d known she would, because she loved him and trusted him. Not for the first time, he marvelled at that level of trust, and wondered how he could possibly honor it the way she deserved.

“She’s nice, she just talks a lot” Mike promised, leading her towards the stairs. “So will my Aunt Lisa, she’s really cool. She’s going to love you. ”

And maybe his parents would, too, if he played his cards right.


End file.
